Cannes Lions 2022 to 2023: The Rapid Rise of AI and Creative Effectiveness

It’s almost that time of year again where tech and advertising executives flock to the South of France to talk about what’s hot in the industry at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.  Last year, VidMob caught up with many of our clients, partners and industry thought leaders to hear what was on their mind around the intersection of data + creativity in a series of “pop in” interviews. 

Depending on who you ask, a lot or not a lot has changed since last year.  Here’s my take on what I expect the buzz will be this year at Cannes and how conversations have evolved. 

An innovation agenda in a budget constrained environment

The mood of Cannes Lions last year was one of post-pandemic revival and the desire for businesses to get back to an innovation agenda, as Lou Paskalis, President and COO of MMA Global stated in his interview with our CEO, Alex.  But, there was looming economic uncertainty that challenged marketers to think about growth and innovation with efficiency in mind.  This is a theme that still holds true in Summer of 2023.  This year, I expect to see brands sharing how they are navigating the headwinds and innovating with measurement and impact.

A 2022 conversation with Johnson & Johnson’s Ander Lopez Ochoa provided some great foreshadowing. He sat down with VidMob’s VP of Revenue Will Post and described his approach of how creative data drives business outcomes at scale, including brand consistency and innovation across media platforms.  

Creative effectiveness is more critical than ever

Creative effectiveness has since become a huge topic for Cannes-Lions, as shown in the The State of Creative Effectiveness white paper release and then the topic earning its own spot in the awards and speaking engagements. We are likely to hear many more stories like this at Cannes this year showcasing how new data sets are driving decision making for global brands.

Tina Allan from FCB was another that was ahead of her time. Last year she said, “Data should inform the inputs, outputs and the outcomes” of the creative process.  Tina had predicted that in a year from then, creative effectiveness would be more important than ever before due to budgets being slashed and the need for marketers to truly know which creative elements are driving the performance of their advertising content.  

Tina described the industry as being in an education phase as it comes to understanding the power of data within the creative process. She urged marketers to “get in the game” of using creative data to fuel creative effectiveness.  A year later, we are seeing a significantly more widespread understanding of how to measure and take action on creative effectiveness amongst marketers.  CMOs, brand and performance marketers know that creative drives as much as 70% of media outcomes and that there are now solutions, like VidMob, to fuel their entire creative process. 

A symbiotic relationship between machines and humans

A dominant theme in the AI narrative has been  humans versus machines.  As AI has taken center stage in business and technology conversations, the conversation around the opposition of these two continues to prevail.  When speaking to Google’s Head of Creative Strategy Venetia Taylor last year, she was eager to engage in a new conversation about finding the symbiosis of these seemingly adversarial forces in an “age of imagination”.  In this age, we’re using “imagination to reconcile technology and humanity and create for people.”  

With the exponential advancements in AI and machine learning over the past year, I anticipate the stories we’ll hear this year at Cannes will be ones that showcase the duality and reciprocity of humans and machines.  Marketers must understand that embracing AI is critical to the way they approach their business strategy and ways of working (and it’s likely many don’t even know they’re already using it).  As Lou Paskalis so eloquently stated, “this business will always be an art, improved by ever evolving science.”   

Be sure to catch the VidMob team at Cannes Lions Festival at Creativity. Let’s connect about how AI is unlocking creative effectiveness for marketers. 

Schedule a meeting: https://www.vidmob.com/canneslions-2023